4 Replies

LOL, seriously, how much do you need to speed this up? If you are concerned about reboot times on your server maybe putting all your eggs in one basket (running every critical service on a single OS image on a single piece of hardware) isn't the best idea. There is a reason why Microsoft's best practices say not to use SBS.

your're right when saying SBS is sth. like an "Single Point of Failure" but sometimes you don't have the budget to seperate services and especially buy CAL's for all Servers you create. Since SBS 2008 you buy a SBS-Cal and use it for all 2008-family servers.

But let us not discuss the advantages and disatvantages here, since it's a bit off topic.

So since you have to have a long way to the coffee-machine to be back when it's rebooted...

Sorry guys,
I personally think SBS is a greath product for the smaller SMB's.
For creating a stable environment you would obvious invest a little more in desend hardware and backup solutions, but this is still way cheaper then seperating the stuff.

For the topic,
We have been investigating the reboot behaviour during my SBS training.
We had put two machine next to each other, one running 2003, the other 2008.
Then fired a reboot.. The big picture? 2003 Shuts down a bit faster, but boots slower. So in time the reboot took about as long.

What happens behind the sence, is SBS shuts down AD first.
Then comes Exchange, but Exchange want's to "inform" AD that it shuts-down, which is not possible, because AD is down allready. This meaning it will shut down on a time out. The same happens in both 2003 and 2008, which is a known story.

So scripting the shutdown could be a wise thing. That way you can shut-down Exchange and AV first to keep your dbs files safe from a time out shut down or other disaster. Also a script can be easily used to shut down from UPS power.